animeengineer: gilbuttxnightgay: Please never say “the Game has been cleared” to me I will...

animeengineer:

gilbuttxnightgay:

Please never say “the Game has been cleared” to me I will probably burst into tears right then and there I am Sword Art Online trash 

There’s a scene in the second novel they didn’t put in the anime, since it would have completely broken the flow. The scene is at the end of Lisbeth’s story, weeks after she dragged Kirito along on a quest for materials for his new sword (the white one with a faint bit of green).

Liz is just working in her shop, a normal day, and gets done with the day’s work orders around lunchtime, walks to the front part of the shop, and sees the shop clerk NPC (who mans the cash register and handles orders and deliveries) despawn. That never happens.

She runs outside in time to see the other PCs in town wondering where all the NPCs vanished to, when the sky turns red with “SYSTEM MESSAGE” signs and a voice announces the game has been cleared, PC HP will be fixed at maximum (i.e. nobody can be killed any more), and everyone will be logged out in a couple minutes. Dancing in the streets, tears everywhere. Logging out after two years stuck in the game.

If they had tried to put that in the anime, it would have been right in the middle of the scene where Asuna and Kirito died in the final battle. “The game has been cleared” is something they hear faintly in the distance as they lose consciousness. Hella tearjerker.

You know how the end of Return of the Jedi is a bit of a train wreck because on the one hand, Ewok party, and the other, Vader’s funeral pyre? It would have been like that.